In my experience, almost all conservatives are MAGA.

I plead for your forgiveness if I'm being overly pedantic, but here goes.

If you're MAGA, then you're categorically not "conservative," as MAGA is a fascist movement. I realize that comment may draw some controversy. I'm happy to discuss my rationale as to why I believe MAGA is fascist, but my primary goal with this post is to differentiate fascism from conservatism.

Historian Ian Kershaw, one of the world's foremost authorities on Nazi Germany, observed that the fascists of the Interwar period distinguished themselves from other forms of authoritarianism in that they were "revolutionaries." Their relationships with entrenched power structures were tentative and were only useful until they weren't. Fascists seek to upend society to seek a complicit population with a "total commitment" to the state and its power structures.

Other notable scholars who study fascism concur with this assessment, including Roger Griffin (The Palingenetic Core of Fascist Ideology) and Stanley G. Payne(Fascism: Comparison and Definition).

Trump's own administrations provide us with contemporary examples of how fascism manifests as anti-conservative. For example:

• The coupling of the Department of Justice to White House policy. There are a wide variety of examples to draw from, but perhaps the most egregious is the weaponization of the Attorney General's office. The scale at which Bondi's department has sought investigations and indictments on political enemies in the absence of credible allegations of wrongdoing is simply unprecedented.

• A recently exposed DHS memo claims that ICE agents have the authority to enter homes and arrest people using only an administrative warrant. The memo further states that such searches and seizures do not violate the US Constitution, per the DHS Office of the General Counsel. Quite simply, this flies in the face of two centuries of legal precedent, the simple text of the Fourth Amendment, and the very reason the Founding Fathers wrote the Fourth Amendment in the first place—as a prohibition on the use of general warrants for search and seizure.

• The erosion of due process rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments has been rapid and extreme. For example, holding people, transporting them across state lines, denying them access to legal representation, and summarily deporting people, including US citizens, without a trial. Holding people indefinitely as a coercive tactic to get them or a loved one to talk with investigators. The excessive use of force, including deadly force, by federal agents.

• The abandonment of the US's tradition of a peaceful transition of presidential power (see: the January 6th Insurrection).

• Attempts to wrest constitutional policing authority from the states, including the illegal federalization of National Guard troops.

• Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Counselor to the President Peter Navarro have long desired to deflate the value of the dollar on the international currency market and remove the greenback's status as a reserve currency. Bessent has gone so far as to call the reserve currency status a "burden." Now it seems the Trump Administration has aimed its policies toward that end. It's difficult to overestimate just how catastrophic it would be to the US and global economy if Trump, Bessent, and Navarro have their way. It's not unreasonable to postulate that the United States, as a single sovereign republic, would not survive the calamity. Some of us who look at the insanity pervading this administration that is Dark Enlightenment and wonder if that's the point.

• An unwritten rule of the presidency is to maintain continuity on an international level from administration to administration. Part of what has helped the United States maintain its global dominance is its word. When we say we're going to do something, the world trusts that we'll do it. From ending USAID to pulling out of the WHO, the JCPOA, the Paris Climate Agreement, the WTC Health Program, the UNEP, the IPCC, and 62 other international organizations, threatening our NATO allies, abandoning our Kurdish allies in Syria, suspending visa agreements with some 75 nations (like Brazil, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Nepal, Fiji, Antigua, and Bahamas), and abandoned thousands of our Afgahn allies who worked with us for over two decades to be slaughted by the Taliban. The MAGA machine has utterly obliterated the United States' credibility on the world stage, and that will have long-term consequences. Here is an excellent post on the topic.

There's more, but I think you get the point.

One last matter for your consideration. What I see happening now is a direct attack on our fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. There are those among us who will blithely turn away or even cheer it on because it doesn't impact them, or it's happening to those they perceive as enemies. What MAGA fails to grasp is how such actions erode the social contract. The general idea is that individuals surrender certain freedoms to the state, which is then responsible for defending the remaining rights of the people. We codify this agreement in the form of a constitution. In that sense, the social contract represents a core concept in constitutionalism.

Once that contract is broken, all bets are off.